Your Life Is a Book by Brenda Peterson

Author:Brenda Peterson [Peterson, Brenda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-57061-931-1
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
Published: 2014-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

FINDING YOUR SPIRITUAL ROOTS

Many of us diverge from the religious training of our childhoods to embark on a spiritual search of our own. Sometimes we return to our ancestors’ spiritual inheritance; other times we blaze our own new beliefs. This search always makes for a fascinating story. Are you descended from a long line of renegade Irish Catholic priests who defied the church and married pagan nuns? Are you a lapsed or backslid Southern Baptist who celebrates the Tao Te Ching? Are you a secular Jew who is searching for spiritual connection by studying both Buddhism and the Kabbalah?

Adding a spiritual dimension to any memoir enriches it, because what we believe suffuses every scene. It is what Brenda calls our “angle of vision” or the lens through which we re-create the world for others and ourselves. Because of her dogmatic Southern Baptist relatives and ancestral line of true believers, Brenda fled the family fervor for a more mystical path. She found it in nature and the ancient wisdom of Taoism, which is nonevangelical and has no church, except the earth. The humor in Taoism and a nonpersonal Divine was balm for her after a childhood of brimstone, blame, and banishing all other believers who did not follow the “one way.” Even to this day, Brenda is uncomfortable in any group in which everyone has the same beliefs. “Whether at a football game, political rally, or religious gathering, I always look for the red Exit signs,” she writes in I Want to Be Left Behind.

Brenda had no intention of ever writing a spiritual memoir; she even resisted it when suggested by editors and Sarah Jane. But one weekend, she gave herself her favorite exercise, “One Scene That Explains Your Whole Life.” Suddenly fifty pages poured out, chronicling Brenda’s spiritual roots. And like the biblical Daniel, she saw the “writing on the wall.” Writing a spiritual memoir seemed the only way to continue to make sense of her life. A scene when she was twelve particularly galvanized her into committing to the spiritual memoir:

Southern Baptist Sword Drills are like spelling bees for true believers.

The Holy Bible was my sword, scripture memorization was the drill, and manual dexterity made the winner. It was a dance of rote memory and fast fingers shuffling through the onionskin pages of the Holy Scripture … I was torn between my ambition to win and my growing fear that I was turning into a kind of spiritual automaton … I knew scripture. I knew what my parents and everyone around me in this southern hamlet believed, but not what I believed.

Finding out what you truly believe is a profound motivation for writing a spiritual memoir. One of the best ways to nourish a spiritual memoir is to read those of others engaged in their own soul-work. Every year, Penguin Books publishes a collection called The Best Spiritual Writing. We use these anthologies in our teaching, especially the 2011 edition edited by Philip Zaleski. Another anthology we admire is Bearing the Mystery.

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